In May I graduated from Yale University with a degree in Philosophy, and at the beginning of August I began my job as a Legal Assistant for McAllister Olivarius.  In college, I had an extra-curricular profile befitting the Rhodes Project: I was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Herald, served a semester as Public Relations Coordinator of the Yale Women’s Center (following in the quaking footsteps of our fearless Rhodes Project Manager, Alice), and was also a member of Yale’s infamous all-female sketch comedy troupe, an experience which proved for me, beyond a doubt, that women are far funnier than men.  I spent my summers during college in New York, hostessing at Bubby’s Pie Company, interning at the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, interning at the Osborne Association (an amazing social work organization that serves the incarcerated and formally incarcerated community in New York), and helping some hooligans that I went to high school with produce a play in an off, off, off, off, (West-) Broadway theater.  During those summers, I also got wicked tans.

So I guess you could call me a dramatic arts and media Feminist/Humanist.  If my resume looks scattered, it’s because my real passion is one that is difficult to demonstrate by listing off previous jobs.  My real passion, frustratingly, is philosophy.  In fact, I think the unique perspective I might bring to the Rhodes Project is my penchant for the theoretical, rather than the practical.  (By the way, my senior essay was called Kant’s Theory of Empirical Cognition: The Regulative Principle for Reflective Judgment as the Mediating Link between the Sensible and the Supersensible.  If anyone wants to read it, email me!)

I think a fundamental implication of the Rhodes Scholarship, one that is embodied by the men and women clever enough to earn one, is that education and brilliant ideas are integral aspects of success, something that seems almost quaint in a world where accumulating wealth has become increasingly vital to attracting attention.  This credo is lived every day by the Chair and Founder of the Rhodes Project, Dr. Ann Olivarius, whose business and lifeblood, McAllister Olivarius, encapsulates what I see as the symbiotic relationship between deep reflection and effective action.  Even the Rhodes Project itself, a daunting confluence of research, publication, and charity, was a project undertaken in the spirit of philosophical reflection: Dr. Olivarius wanted to satisfy her curiosity about the lives that women Rhodes scholars lead, and she wanted the conclusions that she drew to be useful for the greater good.

I am excited at the opportunity to contribute to this project.  As a (moderately) successful woman at the beginning of my career, I am interested learning about the paths that (more) successful women have taken in their professional lives.  Perhaps this education can inform my own career.  Even more than that, I am interested in thinking about the meta-questions that the Rhodes Project raises:  What does it mean to be successful?  What does it mean to be a woman in modern society?  How can these two roles be integrated?  In writing for the Rhodes Blog, I intend to propose some answers.

On October 3, the New York Times reported that Deutsche Telekom is having trouble meeting its newly introduced gender quota.  This comes after an announcement in March that the company—the third-largest in Germany—plans to raise the percentage of management positions held by women from 12 to 30 percent by 2015.  Deutsche Telekom is the first big company to respond to pressure from the German government, which has indicated that if the number of women in board rooms does not increase, it might enact quotas similar to those in other European countries, particularly Norway—which has mandated that at least 40 percent of board seats in public corporations go to women.

Deutsche Telekom’s efforts to meet its quota have included increased recruitment of female university graduates and women with management experience from outside the telecommunications industry, as well as increased opportunities for parental leave and part-time work.  But despite the addition of two women to the company’s Executive Committee, the number of senior executives in its German operations is still only 13 percent.

The Times takes many stabs at answering the question of why Deutsche Telekom seems to be struggling to meet its goal: from a dearth of female candidates for internal promotion, to a reluctance of senior employees—male or female—to shift to part-time work schedules, thereby provoking a cultural shift that might make senior level positions more family-friendly career prospects.  However, the difficulty is more acute in Germany than in other countries where the company operates.  About halfway through its report, the Times suggests that German culture and national character may be the real root of Deutsche Telekom’s problem:

After kindergarten, half-day schools remain the norm, and only 14 percent of German mothers with one child resume full-time work.  Once they are mothers, many women find careers scuttled by an infrastructure that perpetuates a Teutonic “mother cult” that was taken to an extreme in the Third Reich but that Germany has not fully shed.

This made me raise an eyebrow.

It’s not that I don’t know what the NYT is referring to—the celebration of German families and motherhood was part of the Nazi Party’s extremely racist platform on the perpetuation of bloodlines.  Apparently, we are to understand that a big component of the work-life problem in Germany is a remnant of the Third Reich’s volk ideology, which has infiltrated the German societal system enough to keep men and women convinced that a mother’s primary place is in the home, looking after her (blonde, lederhosened) children.  But I feel like the Times owes its readers more explanation of this cartoonish phrase, held out as the fascist cherry atop Germany’s particular brand of the patriarchy.  (Incidentally, I also feel that “Teutonic Mothercult” would be an extremely excellent name for a heavy metal band.)  When I read this article, my reaction was not “Oh, right, the Teutonic mother cult—I totally know what you are talking about and have heard that phrase used lots of times,” but rather, “Why didn’t the editors  include a citation to a work of scholarship here?”  A short investigation reveals the reason that they didn’t:  the Times actually invented this terminology only a few months ago.  There are 44 hits for “Teutonic mother cult” on Google, all of which link back to the NYT, which first coined the phrase in an article about German parenting this August.  Here, the Times reports that the percentage of German mothers who work full time lags far behind European counterparts.  The government structures that support this difference, says the Times, citing half-day school programs and a taxation system that rewards unequal pay within families, is a remnant of a “Teutonic Mother Cult infamously celebrated by the Nazis.”  More modern members of the cult, the story observes, express disapproval of mothers who opt for nannies or day-care, rather than remaining by their children’s sides.

It is amusing that the Times, perhaps riding on the coattails of “Tiger Mother’s” success at earning meme-status, seems to have invented a catchy phrase for another culture’s women-and-families issue (which—like “Tiger Mom”—will undoubtedly help steer those of us wishing to discuss women’s issues towards reducing truth to stereotype).  But jokes aside, the newspaper’s observations about the problems with which German women, in particular, seem to be confronted, are interesting.  Achieving a successful balance between work and family life is a universal struggle, but the Times’ research on German women demonstrates that the degree to which this struggle is, in particular, a women’s issue is determined socio-culturally rather than biologically.  That is, if German women, in particular, feel pressure to bow out of the professional sphere because of a centuries-spanning cultural phenomenon (De Teutonic Materkult), this means culture rather than biology is the culprit—and that the ways women view work and family can be changed over time.  The current variation in views from nation to nation also suggests that the methods by which we might remedy these views where they are hindering progress towards gender equality would do well to vary.  Getting women into the board room is a different problem in Germany then it is in England, but neither problem will be successfully solved unless the means we use to achieve solutions are aware of the particularities of each culture in which we are operating.

I hope Deustche Telekom is able to overcome its difficulties and meet its quota.  I suspect its ultimate test will lie in tailoring its message so that it is communicated within, rather than around, the German cultural vernacular.  The company cannot simply impose a European mandate on women with “Teutonic” ideals.  Instead, it is going to have to come up with a German solution to a German problem.  Luckily, the best people for this task (German people) are assigned to it.  It is heartening to know that the company has succeeded in significantly raising the number of women in entry-level positions (which will increase its pool of viable candidates for promotion later), and that it is encouraging male as well as  female executives to make use of flexible work schedules in order to balance family and work life.  If the company does succeed in meeting its quota, a valuable lesson will be learned, not just from its introduction of progressive and female-friendly career opportunities, but from whatever adaptive and creative means it uses encourage Germany, in particular, to dismantle its “mother cult.”

—Rachel

National Work and Family Month celebrates every person’s right to choose balance, and find within that balance the same potential for both capital “S” Success and the lasting impact and importance of a well-lived personal life. The Rhodes Project’s goal is to examine the intersection between gender and success, using as its first main case study the first twenty-odd years of female Rhodes Scholars.

I frequently attend seminars on female leadership due to my work with the Project. I have never been to a session, whether with young professionals or established executives, where the question of managing a family is not raised. At a recent event, where older women, already accomplished in their fields, were advising a group of women in their early 20s, all four panelists agreed that it was most important to “find a solution that works for you,” and suggested “getting good help.” One panelist laid out her solution in detail: “I pay a lot of money for a nanny I love.” Although the crowd had college degrees and boardroom aspirations, to the young mother in her first junior position who had asked the question, this solution was probably not going to be a possibility. It is even less accessible to women trying to make ends meet in wage-earning positions, or doing unpredictable shift work. But for some reason, although we have by now accepted the right to equal opportunity in employment, as a society, we have not yet come to realize any intrinsically related right to equal opportunity for balance, or at least, for seeking a flexible solution.

All of the women on the panel recognized that balancing work and family was an almost universal issue. One panelist who did not have children discussed the flipside of the problem, unfairly having to cope with the overflow from parents who could not manage all of their responsibilities, demonstrating how even those without traditional family commitments were affected. The panelists were partners in their law firms, heads of their banks, and directors of strategy at their companies; they were decision makers. And yet not one of them talked about advocating for policies that might allow other men and women to navigate the difficulties that they themselves were so keenly aware of, and that they know plague the vast majority of their staff.

This demonstrates how the bias against balance can be a self-perpetuating cycle: if the vast majority of those who make it to the top are able to do so only using costly, tailored solutions, then our leaders will not necessarily be the best suited to understand and accommodate the needs of less economically empowered workers. Despite the fact that it affects any person with a job and a life, balance will remain relegated to the domain of the privileged.

A recent New York Times article on rising poverty levels amongst young families brings the economic impact of a labor market that does not want to accommodate parents starkly into view. The article cites several possible reasons for this rise, including the obvious effects of the economic downturn and a shift in government aid spending to the elderly, but discrimination against parents was also part of the mix. One interviewee described how she had attempted to hide her family from potential employers to escape this bias, while another summed up bluntly: “It’s just a hard time to be a parent.”

At the Rhodes Project, our target study group exemplifies a certain brand of second wave feminist thinking: if the barriers to educational and professional opportunities are removed, then, after a certain adjustment period, women should rise according to their merits just as quickly as men. These women were chosen for the Scholarship because they showed the potential to be leaders – we wondered whether they would lead in reforms that would make this balance possible, as well as in the structures of power where their male counterparts have often been found.

Bill Clinton is often held up as the apotheosis of the kind of leader the Rhodes Scholarship is supposed to produce; of course when he received his, women couldn’t apply. There is bound to be some disparity in cumulative attainments when men have been Rhodes Scholars for 109 years and women for 34. Still, there are fewer women Rhodes Scholars in the public eye than men. But although the majority of these women might be “invisible” when the blazing stars amongst Rhodes recipients are counted, many are privately powerful, savoring the spoils of traditional Success with a markedly reduced interest in attendant attention. They are also tend to be markedly successful in a personal dimension – they have topped off their substantial professional accomplishments with the equally impressive feats of having relationships with partners, children, friends, and community animated by the same thoughtful ambition that characterizes their careers.

We have found that many Rhodes women may appear to “forsake” a traditional position of importance to create their own paths and careers, script their own lives. And in this track, they also advocate for all families to find balance in the workplace.

To provide a concrete example of this phenomenon, I’ll turn to the Rhodes woman I know best: the CEO and founder of the Rhodes Project, Dr. Ann Olivarius, who also started the law firm that currently supports our work, McAllister Olivarius. After hitting all of the stops on what one of our participants termed “the smart kid hamster wheel” – picking up degrees from Yale’s Law School and School of Management, a prestigious judicial clerkship, a position running the corporate division of a top law firm, Shearman & Sterling, Dr. Olivarius proved handily that the “male” world of success was wide open to her. But rather than compromise on her own values, both in terms of personal working style and emphasis on quality family time with her husband and three children, Dr. Olivarius set out to create a business that proved the two could be fused. Today, McAllister Olivarius’ executive committee includes parents who use flexible scheduling and smart phones to spend the most time with their families while still working full time, life-long learners who use the firm’s accommodating policies to sharpen their professional abilities, and places for children and elderly family members to visit the firm when other arrangements fall through. This makes the atmosphere in the office extremely pleasant, as employees thank their management for this flexibility by working cheerfully and hard.

Dr. Olivarius’ law firm is a fabulous financial success; the business model works, both in terms of its professional victories and its ability to retain strong talent – some of its people have worked with Dr. Olivarius for decades, and of course, her husband, now a managing partner in the firm, has been by her side for the better part of a lifetime.

Dr. Olivarius is not alone among Rhodes women in undertaking this kind of approach. Dr. Nanette Fondas spent years at the top of the academy, teaching at Duke, Harvard’s Radcliffe College, and the University of California, before stepping off of that track to dedicate herself to work and family advocacy as the Executive Editor of the major online movement, MomsRising.com. She then used her experience to co-author a book that translated a desire for flexible solutions into actionable plans for employers and employees at every economic level. Dr. Jasmine Nahhas di Florio balanced a passion for social justice with a successful career in corporate law – she worked at the major law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell, served as an attorney-advisor at the U.S. Department of Treasury, and consulted at the United Nations on private-public sector partnerships. She was equipped for a high-flying career in politics or the law, but chose to move into the non-profit sector, where she now serves as the Vice President of Strategy and Partnerships at Education for Employment, a network of non-profits working in the Middle East and North Africa to provide jobless youths with the skills to find solid employment. Her work attacks the other side of the balance question, ensuring the ability to have a career to balance one’s life against.

This list goes on. The Rhodes women we have studied have deliberately changed their paths to make space for their own lives, and to try to make space for the free choices of others. Although they aren’t standing in every spotlight, they and others who share their concerns are paving the way for women and men at every level of society to have work lives that can accommodate children, elder-care concerns, friends, passions and adventures; and I hope they are setting an example for a future where our leaders, those who make the decisions that affect millions of families, will be able base those decisions on the rich experience of enjoying exceptional accomplishment as well as whole lives.

It’s National Work and Family Month in the US, and the Blog-a-thon has been busy. This year, we have been particularly pleased to see even more voices joining the conversation, and proving that this is truly a global issue. We’ll be tweeting with the #NWFM tag all month, but here are some of our favorite pieces:

• Two smart articles on how to make flexible work, often the best option for balance, a reality here and here.
• We love the National Science Foundation’s Career-Life Balance Initiative, kicked off by First Lady of the US (and our hearts) Michelle Obama.
• The Pew Center’s shocking study, revealing that divorce is the strongest factor for predicting whether women will fall out of the middle class (it’s heroin usage for men). The reasons for this aren’t entirely clear, but disproportionate child-care responsibilities seem to be indicated.
• The confessions of this “undercover” working mom resonated with us!
• Working Mother advocates flexible work strategies as a means of combating economic risks of single parent headed households

This Saturday in the Globe and Mail, Naomi Wolf argued that feminism, although of leftist origins, was not leftist in essence, taking as her example the female politicians who have risen through the ranks of the Tea Party in the US. Although Wolf does not align herself with their politics, she believes that the outsider status and regular mistreatment heaped upon Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman are precisely what allow their populist status to grow. And in their folksy, emotional style, Wolf sees the swelling of a new feminism, championed by conservative women who “don’t share policy preferences with the ‘sisterhood.’” She suggests that the latter group is more in-line with a “true” feminism.  Instead of a movement for some kind of liberal vision of social justice, the feminist movement, under this description, was only requesting a level playing field on which the best man or woman might win:

“The core of feminism is individual choice and freedom, and it’s these strains that are being sounded now more by the Tea Party movement than by the left. But apart from these sound bites, there’s a powerful constituency of right-wing women in Britain and Western Europe, as well as in America, who don’t see their values reflected in collectivist social-policy prescriptions or gender quotas. They prefer what they see as the rugged individualism of free-market forces, a level capitalist playing field, and a weak state that doesn’t impinge on their personal choices.”

Her idea, that feminism has room for capitalistic conservatives, is intriguing, although not new. Unfortunately, however, Wolf plays out this scenario by pitting a caricature of the second wave that dates back to its inception against the headline catching “brand” of feminism that is little more than marketing.

In her catty depiction of the mainstream movement, Wolf reveals her dated material. She takes shots at a “leftist vegetarian[s] in Birkenstocks”, attacking a straw-man that she has apparently saved since the mid-nineties. If Wolf implies that the Feminist institution is opposed to religious faith and to stay-at-home moms, she making an argument that is just as stale. Feminism welcomes these “traditional” values and family structures, as long as one is free to choose them for oneself. A quick look at the agendas of the bastions of the second wave, such as the National Organization for Women, NARAL, Ms. Magazine, and the Feminist Press reveal studious deference to religious freedom, cultural and class diversity, and concerted campaigns for mothers of all kinds. For example, on its list of suggested talking points advocating for gay marriage, NOW has sections specifically addressing the concerns of conservative women and those whose religions do not support same-sex couples.

Wolf pointedly argues that conservative women prefer “a weak state that doesn’t impinge on their personal choices”, which appears to imply that “leftist” feminist reforms do so impose. But where state interventions have been made in the name of this leftist group, the main limitations on personal freedoms come from removing a “right” to discriminate, or to restrict the choices of others. Certainly Wolf does not mean to advocate for a state where one’s own personal freedom is so self interested as to eclipse any consideration of the personal freedom of others?

And her underdog heroes are also treated with a lazy and superficial hand. In addition to Palin and Bachman, Wolf includes Margaret Thatcher and “Muslim women” (apparently all of them) in her vision of this libertarian push for equality. Margaret Thatcher has already made it quite clear that she has makes no common cause with the American politicians who claim to follow in her female conservative footsteps, and the entire population of “Muslim women” may also not be pleased to cede the title of “rugged individualist” to Palin and Bachman who have both made it clear that they would use state power to suppress the “evil and wicked” religion of Islam.

In fact, if Wolf wishes to argue that choice is the essence of feminism, then she should automatically discount either of the Tea Party leaders, who have built their careers on their support of the military and of religious values, as Wolf points out, but also on platforms of intolerance towards any value that differs from their own. Both women have routinely attempted to impose their personal beliefs as law with the specific intention of restricting the options available, hardly consistent with the “libertarian” vision that Wolf wishes to present.

But I find it difficult to believe that Wolf has not seen our counter-arguments coming from miles away. I take issue with this article not because I disagree with its argument, but rather because it is such low-hanging fruit. Wolf has made a career as a “controversial” feminist, gleefully shaking up a self-confident second wave. And her early work was well-worth the uproar – The Beauty Myth is certainly a fixture in our library. Similar to Wolf’s infamous defence of Julian Assange last year, however, this “bold” statement sounds hollow, an attempt at attention rather than food for thought. We suggest that Wolf get up to speed with the feminist movement of 2011, and with the policies of her so-called heroines, in the hopes that she might find the material for a more relevant critique in her next op-ed.

It’s been a bleak year for women’s health, what with the Title X fracas and ongoing state battles to defund Planned Parenthood. Hence, the Obama administration’s Monday announcement that private health insurers will be required to cover preventive health services for women without copays or deductibles is welcome news. This historic legislation, the Affordable Health Care Act, means that contraception (planned and emergency), STD and HIV testing, gestational diabetes screening, and even breastfeeding consultation, will be offered as part of the full ‘Well Woman’ panel, effective January 2013 (although some insurance plans may offer benefits earlier).

As a woman, I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. As a future medical professional, I’m ecstatic.  This means that preventive care and fertility control are finally being acknowledged as integral to women’s health, that more of us will be able to afford better, long-term contraception, and that –since affordability will be less of an issue – birth control will be more tailored to an individual woman’s health needs. For example, oral contraceptive pills aren’t necessarily the best choice for some women (they are strictly contraindicated in smokers, those with cardiovascular disease or clotting disorders, for example) but due to lack of information and higher cost, many often don’t consider alternatives such as IUDs or Implanon.

Last month, I worked at Planned Parenthood of Baltimore, and even though they offered a sliding scale for contraceptives, many of our patients still could not afford their desired birth control. I talked to countless women who wanted IUDs or Implanons, but had to choose the pill for affordability, were unable to stick to the rigorous schedule of taking it every day at around the same time, and repeatedly found themselves with undesired pregnancies. They then had to resort to terminations that, for them, were last resorts. Women want good contraception, and it’s a huge step that it can now be subsidized.

Abortion, of course, still won’t be covered, since the law requires ‘preventive’ coverage. Given the glaring statistics about pregnancies in the U.S. – almost 50% are unintended, and of these, 40% are aborted – offering and subsidizing better contraception will lead to fewer unintended pregnancies and, therefore, fewer terminations. All of which is to the good. While abortions are immensely safe medical and surgical procedures, they still carry with them psychological and medical consequences that could be avoided with good prevention.

So, just 52 years after President Eisenhower declared at a press conference that birth control was ‘not the government’s business’, the Obama administration should be applauded for making it so, and for making women’s health a priority.

Lakshmi Krishnan is a third-year medical student at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She was a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford, from 2006 to 2009.

Konigsberg begins her argument with the idea that, “There are several variables in the dual-earner equation, debits as well as credits that need to be tallied in order to take a true measure of who does more.” And yet Konigsberg compares a husband’s work to his wife’s work using only one variable—time (perhaps a publication pun?). She does not mention once the pay disparity between men and women, that part of the reason a wife might be assigned domestic duties is because even if she worked the same hours, her time is considered less valuable than her husband’s.  According to a 2009 report from the U.S. Census Bureau, women who worked a full 35 hour week still earned 23% less than their male counterparts. Alternatively, if she is interested in “debits,” then perhaps Konigsberg should have considered the potential loss of earnings that an educated homemaker represents. In her landmark book, The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued, Anne Crittenden estimates that she lost somewhere between $600,000 and $700,000 by leaving the New York Times in order to become a mother. She explains:

“The mommy tax I paid is fairly typical for an educated middle-class American woman. Economist Shirley Burggraf has calculated that a husband and wife who earn a combined income of $81,500 per year and who are equally capable will lose $1.35 million if they have a child. Most of that lost income is the wages forgone by the primary parent.” (89)

The lost wages that the ‘mommy tax’ represents are hardly equivalent to lost work. Indeed, stay-at-home parents push the economy forward even though they are not included in the nation’s GDP. The question, ‘What is a wife worth?’ is a curious conundrum because caregiving and moneymaking are separate jobs with separate rewards, but I hardly think that a ledger line of hours is the appropriate mode of comparison. Just because a husband and wife could potentially spend roughly equal amounts of time “working” does not mean that their services are equally appreciated.

Which brings me to my next point: Konigsberg is surprised by her findings. She writes, “It may come as a surprise to you, as it did to me, to discover that on balance, husbands and wives have never before had such similar workloads.”  Well, I wasn’t surprised. The question was never, “Who logs the most hours of ‘work’?” That question inadvertently—and dangerously—implies a post gender world where men’s and women’s work are equivalent. Moreover, Konigsberg never explicitly defines what she means by ‘work.’ My sense is that she tries to use the term as a panacea that includes the professional and domestic, the paid and unpaid. The reason husbands and wives have “never before had such similar workloads” is because no one thought of a wife’s responsibilities as ‘work’ until recently. I am glad that Konigsberg feels comfortable using ‘work’ so inclusively, but this doesn’t mean we have achieved gender parity. If our society had, men and women would move freely between domestic and professional spheres because all that would matter is how many hours you log. Bundling socks would be on par with trading stocks. But since they aren’t, Konigsberg should admit that what she is really asking is, “How do couples negotiate domestic and professional responsibilities?” I’m interested in how they value work inside versus outside the home. At the root of the ‘chore wars’ that Konigsberg describes is the idea that men and women value domestic duties differently. Applying a one-variable mode of analysis by asking the question, “Who logs the most hours of ‘work’?” avoids the core issue of how we value different types of work. It’s a copout.

Konigsberg feels like she must overcompensate for the “global notion that working women—and working mothers in particular—toil much more than their partners.” She’s tired of defending women, so now she’s defending men. It’s a strange case of reverse gender bias, if you ask me. Konigsberg cites a Families and Work Institute survey of men, which concluded that “long hours and increasing job demands are conflicting with more exacting parenting norms.” This research is very interesting, and I have actually come across similar studies before. I have also come across analyses of these studies that point to a father’s desire to work longer hours at work in order to avoid domestic responsibilities.  (See Perfect Madness: motherhood in the age of anxiety). Another part of the survey that Konigsberg fails to explore fully is the statistic that “60% of fathers said they were having a hard time managing the responsibilities of work and family, compared with only 47% of mothers in dual-earner couples.” Given the tone of the rest of the article, it’s obvious that the reader is meant to sympathize with the father here. He has a hard time managing work/life balance! More so than a woman! Let’s not get carried away here. The fact that one person has a harder time than someone else managing responsibilities of work and family does not necessarily mean that the first person experiences more pressure. Maybe, in 2011, men are just worse than women at negotiating this balance. As a young adult male, I would take no offense if someone made that claim.

Toward the end of the piece, Konigsberg makes a fair point about man’s struggle with housework:

“Brad Harrington, executive director of the Center for Work and Family, points out that men may be feeling particularly squeezed because they never anticipated having so much domestic responsibility. ‘It’s a surprise for them. They weren’t prepared that this would be expected of them, and they have no role models of how to do it,’ he says.”

It’s true that parental roles are different today than they were fifty, thirty, even ten years ago. In Passages, Gail Sheehy discusses the professional identities that women are excitedly taking on in addition to their already established domestic identities. She writes, “no one tells girls that motherhood is only half a lifework.” I can imagine Harrington’s version: “no one tells boys that careerhood is only half a lifework.” Albeit from the opposite direction, men in 2011 also struggle to create a sustainable work/life balance. As for Harrington’s claim that these men have no role models to look at for advice, a simple search on Amazon yields 533 places to start. Happy reading!

–Michael

• An article in the Guardian discusses The Tree of Life’s brilliant and reclusive director—Rhodes Scholar Terrence Mallick.  Mallick’s personal decision to focus all his energies on making the movie—as opposed to promoting it through red-carpet premiers and award shows—is refreshing in today’s hyper-documented entertainment industry (although we delight to think about what Mallick’s blog would look like). The Rhodes Project looks forward to seeing this movie at the cinema!
• We congratulate Dr. John Hood on his appointment as the new Chair of the Rhodes Trust. This position is an incredibly demanding and important one, and we are confident that Dr. Hood will prove to be an excellent leader for the Scholarship.
• We also extend our congratulations to 1992 Scholar Tracy Robinson on her recent election to serve on the Inter American Commission for Human Rights. Born in Jamaica, Robinson exemplifies the intersections of race, gender, and scholarship. We applaud her work on gender equality, child support, sex work, and family law, among other things.
• On the tube, Alice is reading Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook—an oldie but a (Nobel Prize-winning) goodie. The novel explores themes of Stalinism and the Cold War, fragmentation and integration, and female struggles with work and motherhood. If you’re looking for a shorter, but still inspirational text, you should absolutely read Lessing’s 2007 Nobel Prize acceptance speech called “A Hunger for Books.”
• Michael’s current obsession is Gail Sheehy. And everything the woman has ever written. Inspired by Passages and Sex and the Seasoned Woman, Michael is researching the idea of multiple adulthoods in Rhodes women. If you have any suggestions for research, please e-mail Michael at msingleton@rhodesproject.com.  Otherwise, stay tuned for a new long-form article on the Rhodes Project website in the next few weeks.

My name is Casey Calista and I have joined the Rhodes Project team as a consultant focusing on Lucy Banda Sichone. Lucy was a Rhodes Scholar in 1978 and attended Oxford the same time as Dr. Ann Olivarius. The Rhodes Project has previously published a piece on Lucy, available here, which outlines her life, career, and incorrigible personality as Zambia’s first female Rhodes scholar, lawyer, activist for human rights, journalist, politician, mother (yes, the list goes on) and stubborn female who insisted on her independence.

Lucy’s history echoes the women who structure my own. My last name, Calista, was chosen to honor my great grandmother, and through her the string of woman who raised their children singly in turn. I am, unfortunately, exactly what my mother planned me to be – my own person. She now occasionally regrets the strength she instilled in me, particularly when I joined the Peace Corps after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh in 2006 with BAs in Political Science and Religious Studies, telling them to “send me anywhere”. Most Peace Corps Volunteers spend months applying and many more waiting to leave on assignment. But one month after I made my request I flew into Yaoundé, Cameroon and spent the next 27 months in a large village near the border of the Central African Republic running programs to fight malnutrition and organizing women’s groups. On the completion of my two year stint, I spent some time bumming around Africa (I got kicked out of Madagascar during the 2009 coup), and then returned to the States to try out life as a Washington DC intern on the Hill. My work with the Peace Corps forced me to integrate into a forgotten section of the world, and it was uncomfortable for me to suddenly land in the place that makes the whole planet spin (at least in the minds of most there). So I escaped again to one of the most desolate corners of the globe.

The French Riviera is an unbelievably torturous existence: balmy temperatures, Mediterranean tanged air, sunshine, chocolate, and, of course, the wine. Unappreciated plenty had nagged at my heart strings while in America, but in Europe, wealth was okay because I was observing it as an ex-pat. After a year teaching in the French public school system, the job that garnered my shiny EU work visa, I returned to student-hood myself, pursuing a Masters in International Relations at Kings College London.

As a nomad who esteems education and as a rabid feminist I feel at home in the Rhodes Project, specifically within the Lucy Banda narrative. I hope to interact with this larger community and inspire you all to become as interested in Lucy’s tale as I already am.

–Casey

Sandberg graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard in 1991, became Chief of Staff of the U.S. Treasury Department at age 29, and is now the COO of Facebook, making her one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley. And like most powerful people, her development and her character are far from uncomplicated.  She is by turns a classic Second wave success, a “post-feminist” executive, prone now to self-effacing silence and then to a swaggering confidence. There are moments in this article when Sandberg—not with any help from Auletta—reconciles her conflicting personalities. Take, for instance, her blend of traditionally masculine and feminine personas in the office. Granted I’ve never met the woman, but odds are she could work a party better than any of the Bennett sisters. When Sandberg started at Facebook, she went around to everyone’s desk to introduce herself. According to Chris Cox, the vice-president of product at Facebook, “It was this overt gesture, like, ‘O.K., let your guard down. I’m not going to hole up with Mark. I’m going to try and have a relationship with you guys.’” This open and accessible stance jives with everything I’ve been reading about “female” leadership, which is all about collaboration and communication rather than hierarchical status. But Sandberg shows two sides of the coin: since her hiring, Sandberg has taken on responsibilities that are more suited to her superior, Zuckerberg, because she is more commanding in one-on-one encounters:

Zuckerberg says he’s grateful that Sandberg “handles things I don’t want to,” such as advertising strategy, hiring and firing, management, and dealing with political issues. “All that stuff that in other companies I might have to do. And she’s much better at that.

Too often we read about career women feeling the pressure to subscribe to the old-boys-club culture that thrives on intimidation tactics or to use their sexuality as a bargaining chip or to struggle under the weight of being the office “mom.” We cheer on this depiction of Sandberg, which proves that there is a way to balance conventionally male and female character traits, that a woman can be both assertive and approachable in the office.

Other tensions in Sandberg’s story are not so neatly resolved.

Sandberg proclaims that at every stage of her education, “I really fooled them.” The “them” refers to her male classmates. Auletta pointedly notes that Sandberg “did not speak or raise her hand” in Lawrence Summer’s Public Sector Economics class at Harvard; and yet she earned the highest marks on the midterm and final exams.   The payoff of a seminar, as opposed to a tutorial or lecture course, is that each student benefits from the insights of her/his classmates, and any professor who fails to draw out his star performer is certainly failing to do his job as an educator. The fact that this professor was Larry Summers, who infamously blamed women for their underrepresentation in the sciences, adds insult to injury. Perhaps if Summers had encouraged Sandberg to speak up, there would be fewer men running around believing that women never achieve anything in science because of their “innate differences.”

Sandberg continues to have a somewhat inconsistent perspective on women’s progress. In this article, she lists three suggestions for working women today:

First, she said, women need to “sit at the table.” She said that fifty-seven per cent of men entering the workforce negotiate their salaries, but that only seven per cent of women do likewise. Second, at home, “make sure your partner is a real partner.” On average, she said, women do two-thirds of the housework and three-fourths of child care. And, finally, “don’t leave before you leave.” When a woman starts thinking of having children, according to Sandberg, “She doesn’t raise her hand anymore… She starts leaning back.”

Sandberg’s advice, not to mention her language, is particularly puzzling given her experience at Harvard. Here is a woman who, yes, sat down at the table, but seems to have missed the implication that she was meant to participate in the discussion around it as well. Here is a woman who didn’t have the courage to raise her hand in a class she should have been rightfully confident in, demanding that women overcome the age-old conundrum of work and family with the same gesture. Recognizing that people gain perspective as they age, she seems to have forgotten her own early difficulties asserting her obvious intelligence and skills.

Unfortunately, the tensions in Sandberg’s story are left unexamined by Auletta’s writing. Auletta seems to have gone into auto-pilot mode, filling in the blanks of an unconsidered “success story” piece with little attention to Sandberg’s particular tale.  He has drawn our attention to interesting pieces of this story—noting Sandberg’s famously sexist mentor, her “Aha!” moment at Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women Summit in 2005—but exposes his own lack of interest when he immediately follows up Sandberg’s struggle to accept the label of “powerful woman” with the story of how she found a husband. Somewhere in between these two paragraphs, Sandberg transforms from businesswoman to bride—with barely enough pause for a costume change.

The piece shows internal tensions most obviously at its endpoints.  The first line reads: “In 2007, the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, knew that he needed help.” Up until the first section break, Auletta presents Sandberg as the woman who rescued Zuckerberg from Facebook’s potential financial demise. Auletta deliberately creates a highly gendered dynamic:  Facebook is the offspring of “Facemash,” a computer-program where Harvard students were invited to compare girls’ attractiveness; Mark Zuckerberg is president; Facebook’s board of executives is entirely male. Sandberg is hidden behind the scenes of an elaborate apparatus that aggrandizes male success. And then, without another word, Auletta describes Sandberg’s early childhood in North Miami Beach.

After meandering through Sandberg’s “women’s networks,” Auletta concludes the profile with an anecdote about Sandberg’s commencement address at Barnard. One of the graduates paused onstage and told Sandberg, “You’re the baddest bitch.” I think readers here are meant to wonder fondly at the good intentions and filthy language of youth. But in fact, I gaped at Auletta’s completely tone-deaf selection: has he somehow forgotten the damaging stereotype that any intelligent woman is a “bitch,” or, more to the point, that the woman he has just finished profiling has been specifically praised by her colleagues for her collaborative approach? As with the rest of the profile, he has identified a point of tension rich for analysis, but instead of doing the work, he once again decides to just drop the pieces in the laps of his readers.

Which brings me to my final question—why is this profile such a mess? It is poorly structured, lacks any kind of obvious thesis, and seems to ignore what is actually interesting about its subject. Ken Auletta is one of the most celebrated profilers in the New Yorker arsenal. But after reading his biography, I noticed a pattern in his most popular profiles—they are all male subjects: Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Harvey Weinstein. My first class at Yale was a writing seminar with Cynthia Zarin, another New Yorker profiler, and I learned from her that different subjects warrant different styles of profiling. Maybe Zarin and Auletta should sit down for coffee. Auletta has pigeonholed Sandberg into the mould of “success story,” which continues to be a very masculine trope. As a result, he glosses over issues that would bring to light particular parts of Sandberg’s female identity, and he signals transitions that reinforce his own biases. When Auletta does notice that Sandberg’s gender affects her in the workplace or elsewhere, he takes note of it, and starts a new paragraph. If Auletta spent more time on these tensions, he would realize that the question is not, “Can Sheryl Sandberg upend Silicon Valley’s male-dominated culture?” It’s “Is Sheryl Sandberg trying to upend Silicon Valley’s male-dominated culture?” Sandberg is a fascinating figure because she has an uncanny ability to compartmentalize issues of gender and sex bias in the workplace. In fact, she doesn’t seem all that concerned about her identity as a woman in a field controlled by men. There is your profile.

–Michael